Species

Gender

Age

Occupation

Hobby

Family

Alignment

Game Appearances

Voice Actors

Josie Rizal (ジョシー・リサール,Joshī Risāru?) is a character in the Tekken series who is introduced in Tekken 7 as one of the new playable characters. She was first seen as one of the four fighters (the other three being Jin Kazama, Devil Jin and the large red behemoth fighter named Gigas) whose in-game character models were leaked online in March 2015. She later became playable in the arcades' time release in April 21.

Contents

Biography

Appearance

Personality

Josie has been described to be bright, cheerful and quite energetic, but she has become more prone to crying because of something that happened in the past [2]. It later reveals in her backstory that she was a big crybaby at the young age and is unable to ease it. During her training course and confrontation against Kuma, Josie was revealed to be afraid of bears and makes her flee in tears when it was encountered as well as being interrogated by it which caused her to faint.

Unlike most characters that speak in their native tongue, Josie speaks English with a local accent rather than Filipino.

Story

Josie Rizal tried her best to support her family by balancing two jobs; one as a model, and one as a professional kickboxer. One day, while she was out running on her usual training course along the mountain roads, she was suddenly confronted by an enormous, hairy creature!

Josie screamed, and then fled half in tears, but the creature remained hot on her heels. Realizing she had little chance of escape, Josie abruptly came to a halt, then turned trembling, to face her feral foe...

Ending Description: Josie finally defeats Kuma as she cries in relief. To her surprise, Kuma barely wakes up as he only returns her earring back which Josie noticed her earring was missing during their fight. Josie thanked the bear for retrieving it but Kuma then faints and Josie tries to wake him up.

In Kuma's ending she was finally awakened after being defeated by Kuma which she screams in terror. She thinks he's going to eat her but Kuma replies that he's not gonna eat her by roaring which causes Josie to faint. Kuma tries to wake her up and realized that she had failed to be enlisted into the Tekken Force despite her fighting skills.

Gameplay

Fundamentally, Josie plays very similarly to Bruce, sharing some of his assets, such as his Cyclone Kick (3+4), Ducking Low Kick (f,N,d,df+3), Shotshell (3,2~F), Pasart Stance and Dteh Kao Pa Jong (uf+3+4) (Respectively the Spinning Scythe, Slide-in Low Kick, Hollow Point to Slide In, Switch Stance and Rapid Double Knee in her Move List), but with some new assets as well, namely her Intercept Kick (3,3), Intercept Cannon (3,f+3) and Lexias Chain (db+4,2,3). She also resolves Bruce's weakness of not having a ground hitting middle attack by having Full Blast Kick (d+3+4), effectively making her better than Bruce when it comes to ground game. For veteran Bruce users, Josie is the character that best emulates him in his absence in Tekken 7 because of these similarities.

She is also a very easy character to pick up and play with for first time users, being a very agile and fast character with an overall high damage output. One thing to note, however is that unlike most female characters in the series (i.e., Nina, Lili, Asuka/Jun or Master Raven) she is incapable of performing a Back Handspring (ub,b) so it is advised to Back Dash Cancel (b,b,db) if one wishes to give themselves space while being pressured by their opponent.

Fighting Style

Josie fights using Eskrima-based Kickboxing (エスクリマをベースとしたキックボクシング,Esukurima wo Bēsu to shita Kikkubokushingu?). Eskrima is a style of combat that emphasizes on weapon-based combat that generally involves sticks and knives. Eskrima is officially called Arnis, the formalized umbrella name of the style in the Philippines, though this name and Kali are also used. Josie uses the unarmed variant of the style that focuses more on defensive techniques, grappling and weapon disarming as opposed to the more offensive armed variant.

Unarmed Eskrima focuses much more on reacting to and countering an attack rather than offensive striking. However, vicious strikes and kicks are still used. Her take of Eskrima with boxing makes her style more similar to a real life Eskrima variant called Yaw-Yan also known as the Dance of Death or Sayaw ng Kamatayan in Filipino. Though sharing various similarities with Muay Thai, Yaw-Yan has slight visual differences as well as focusing more on ranged combat than clinching, which is very much present in Josie's movements and strikes.

After unveiling her playable debut, Josie's introduction to the game has allegedly resulted in a controversy between the NCCA and the Philippine Government, mainly due to her name being a reference to the country's national hero, José Rizal. This led to rumors that her character was affront to Philippine culture and would be ordered removed. NCCA legal counsel Trixie Cruz-Angeles clarified that the agency had yet to issue any position on that matter stating that the NCCA was not asked to delete the character and have not taken by this issue or being issued an opinion. It was later learned that such petition was the result of a satire website article and a wrongly-interpreted news article.

Josie can use her rage drive (f,n,d,d/f+3+4) after landing a Flying Elbow (f+1+2) or a counter hit with Slide-in Low Kick (f,n,d,d/f+3, but only in certain situations) to launch her opponent into an aerial combo. This makes her, Master Raven, Kuma and Panda the only characters who are able to launch off moves that would otherwise only give guaranteed ground hits when rage is active.

Josie’s Character Episode is based on a Japanese children’s song titled “Mori no Kuma-San” (Bear in the Woods) where a girl meets a bear, gets chased by it, and turns out only wants to return an earring she dropped.